FRONTIER INDUSTRIALISTS Fifty Years of Innovation at L&H FRONTIER INDUSTRIALISTS Fifty Years of Innovation at L&H by Sam Hurst CONTENTS Introduction 11 one Fearless 17 two Second Generation 39 three CNC Revolution 69 © 2014 by L&H Industrial | All rights reserved. four Selling Value 85 Book design by Mike Palmer. five String of the Kite 101 Printed in Canada. Notes & Permissions L&H Industrial has taken all reasonable steps to six Accidental Genius 111 Published by ensure the accuracy of the information provided in L&H Industrial the book; any errors or omissions are inadvertent. Gillette, Wyoming seven Coming of Age 135 United States of America Captions in this book provide information on the creator and the repository from which the images in eight Life of Pirates 143 In association with Vantage Point Historical this book were obtained. L&H Industrial has made its Services, Inc. best efforts to determine the creator and copyright nine Building Gears 151 South Dakota holder of all images used in this publication. Images United States of America. held by L&H Industrial have been deemed to be owned by the company unless we were able to ten Third Generation 163 ISBN-13: 978-0-9796389-9-2 determine otherwise. Special thanks to photographer ISBN-10: 0-9796389-9-2 Steve Babbitt at www.stevebabbittphotography.com. Conclusion 181 | 1 On the Wyoming frontier, innovators have always combined ingenuity and inspiration with hard work to shape the future. They have been unafraid to learn from their mistakes. In 1964, when Leon Wandler and Hank Barney established what is today L&H Industrial in the boomtown of Gillette, their vision was modest, but their commitment to quality craftsmanship was enormous. As this history reveals, many of us at L&H have learned the hard way, but we have grown as individuals and as a company. Learning by doing, we have made L&H what it is today—a global leader in the design and manufacturing of superior aftermarket parts for equipment ranging from mining shovels to draglines to drills with an unparalleled reputation for service in the field. Our success, quite frankly, comes from taking the lessons of the past to heart. We hope this story will inspire and pay tribute to our employees, past and present, who have helped to shape L&H Industrial. We also offer it to readers as a thank you to customers who have given us the opportunity to grow and tackle new challenges for more than five decades. Mike Wandler, Jeff Wandler, and Jim Clikeman 2 | 3 Taconite bucket wheel rebuild for Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad in 2014. (L&H Industrial.) Robotic welding allowed L&H welders like Josh Testerman to work at a 4 safe distance from high-intensity heat. Introduction (Steve Babbitt. | 5 L&H Industrial.) L&H’s redesign of the boom for P&H 4100 XPB shovels reduced the 6 effects of torque and stress. (Brittney Introduction Thomas. L&H | 7 Industrial.) The DMU 200FD 5-axis CNC machine center allowed L&H to manufacture drill bits from a single block of steel rather than welding pieces together. The result was longer life and more consistent performance. (Steve Babbitt. L&H Industrial.) Work on the NASA crawler-transporter 2 undercarriage pushed L&H to new levels of precision8 manufacturing and field machining. (NASA.) Introduction | 9 INTRODUCTION Jason Percifeld had been on the road for a long time. He was only 29, but he had lived out of a suitcase for the past five years, running field service crews for L&H Industrial at mines throughout the American West. In 2013 he took a detour south to Florida to supervise a field crew charged with the responsibility to retrofit the undercarriage on the NASA crawler-transporter (CT-2) that would carry the next generation of deep space rockets to the launch pad at Cape Kennedy. In 2014, he was back home in Gillette, Wyoming leading a team assigned to rebuild a taconite bucket wheel for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe ore dock on Lake Superior, Wisconsin. A thousand miles away, Jason’s cousin, Dustin Roush, was wrapping up the details of a new maintenance and parts contract on 10 shovels for a large mine in the oil sands of Alberta, Canada. Meanwhile, halfway around the world, Jason and Dustin’s uncles, Mike and Jeff Wandler, were negotiating new partnerships in India, expanding machine shop capabilities in Arizona and Mexico, and launching new products in Nevada and Chile. These were the third-generation projects of L&H Industrial, Inc. They were bigger, bolder projects than Leon Wandler and his partner Hank Barney ever could have imagined when they founded the L&H Welding and Machine Company in the small oil field boomtown of Gillette, Wyoming. Jason Percifeld and a field service crew from L&H spent most of 2013 under the hulking body of NASA’s crawler-transporter (CT-2), retrofitting Back in 1964, Leon and Hank had a work crew of six. Fifty years later, L&H Industrial the transporter undercarriage. In 2014, the NASA project was the largest had nearly 500 employees spread across the globe. In 1964, the L&H machine shop had contract L&H had ever undertaken. (L&H Industrial.) 10 Introduction | 11 the capacity to work on oil rigs that were generation in the Wandler family, each owned a dragged from the field in the back of semi-trailer “one-percent” stake in the future. trucks. In 2014, L&H tradesmen built 66-foot shovel booms, suspension track shoes for The 50-year odyssey of L&H from an oil field job shovels operating in the oil sands of Canada, and shop to an international industrial manufacturer undercarriages and component assemblies for the was not easy. Embedded in the company’s story world’s largest mining equipment. The component are lessons for anyone interested in the spirit parts of the bucket wheel rebuild, alone, were of entrepreneurship, the constant struggle for bigger than any parts that Leon and Hank could technological advantage, the trials of family-run have worked on in 1964, and in 2014 the bucket- businesses, and the challenges that small companies wheel was only one of hundreds of projects face when they compete in the global economy. Like flowing through the L&H shops. all entrepreneurial stories, the L&H story is as much about family relationships, personal struggles, and In 1964, Leon Wandler repaired and welded broken seat-of-the-pants decisions with big consequences, steel and scribbled innovative design improvements as it is about bold business initiatives and brilliant on the backs of bar napkins. Fifty years later, the financial insights. L&H Engineering Department designed original parts under L&H’s Omega brand that set new Fundamentally, the L&H story is about innovation. standards for quality and durability. In 1964, Leon It is filled with a mix of caution and overconfidence, Wandler ran his shop from the checkbook in his a fierce drive to succeed and dark moments of self- back pocket. In 2014, L&H posted sales of $100 doubt, stubborn persistence in the face of ridiculous million. In 1964, Leon and Hank served customers odds, a strange sort of faith that drives individuals, in the Powder River Basin in Gillette. Half a century and men and women working together to create later, L&H had partnerships in Chile, Mexico, something that no one thought possible. Like so India, and Canada. Despite its rapid growth, L&H many stories of American enterprise, it begins L&H made its largest investment in new CNC technology when it remained a family company, owned by two of on the road. purchased a Höfler Rapid 6000-6 meter gear grinder that gave the Leon’s sons—Mike and Jeff—along with their company the ability to manufacture the highest quality gears in partner and Chief Financial Officer Jim Clikeman. the world. (L&H Industrial.) Jason Percifeld and Dustin Roush, the third 12 Introduction | 13 Leon Wandler’s combination of relentless work ethic and innovation quickly turned L&H into the “go to” machine shop in the oil fields of Wyoming. The original L&H shop on the outskirts of Gillette had the feel of a machine shop in the heart of the industrial Midwest. Most of the machines were castoffs from World War II, reconditioned and fine tuned by Leon to perform as good as new. (L&H Industrial.) Work on the NASA14 crawler-transporter 2 undercarriage pushed L&H to new levels of precision manufacturing and field machining. (NASA.) Fearless | 15 FEARLESS The Life of a Frontier Machinist …(the) oil fields created a scene onto which Two flat tires. It was an inauspicious beginning. walked a new individualist reminiscent of the Leon Wandler hated rubber. Mostly, his friends say, he hated anything with rubber tires. old trappers and the cowboys. The roustabout He was a man of steel, a man of bearings and gears, steel tracks, and threaded shafts. reeks as much of toughness as grease. His lore In the summer of 1963, Leon quit his job as a machinist at the B & H Welding and 1 Machine shop in Glendive, Montana, and headed south to the Wyoming oil patch. belongs to the machine shop and the toolbin He sold the family home, bought a ten-foot wide trailer, and shipped it to the small rather than the forest and the plain. He has hell- oil boomtown of Gillette, where he had gotten a job as foreman at the “Bugs” Young raising qualities of the old-timers but skills that Machine Shop servicing the oil rigs and pumps of the desolate, wind-swept Powder River Basin for $3.00 an hour.